1/26/2006 @ 6:00AM

Bonnie Fuller: Queen Of The Tabloids

High-priced “queen of the tabloids” Bonnie Fuller (she’s paid $1.5 million per year) isn’t a member of “the club.” She’s not an insider, not one of the Condé Nast boys and not a Time Inc. smoothie. She’s the U. of Toronto rather than the Harvard Crimson. No Anna Wintour chic. No regular table at Elaine’s. No Manhattan pad or limo about town.

Let’s put it this way: She and fellow Canadian Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair do not travel in the same circles. She drives her staff, works late, then goes home to the ‘burbs (Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.), her architect husband and their four children.

But when it comes to magazines–and what readers want–this kid has the touch.

For the last two and a half years, Bonnie’s been doing an unfashionable job at an unfashionable company, working as exec VP and editorial director of American Media–a job and a company routinely bad-mouthed by the snobs.

Although Bonnie oversees 23 magazines, her considerable energies have been focused on a single title, TheStar, a former tabloid that’s now all tarted up. She and her boss, David Pecker, transformed the cheap, downmarket Star into a pricey glossy with a cover price that’s risen from $2.19 to $3.49 “with no impact on sales and no price resistance,” says group publisher Michelle Myers. Their ad-page sales were 30% higher in 2005 than in 2004 (a big jump in a soft year), and they’re budgeting higher for what looms as a tough year in 2006.

Pecker needs a win, and rivals are predicting a loss. And it all falls on Bonnie, a ringer for the young Anjelica Huston. If she turns The Star into a bottom-line winner, she’s earned her dough.

Hot magazines are no novelty for Fuller. Wherever she’s gone, she’s brought in readers and killed the competition. She was twice named Ad Age‘s editor of the year. She turned the every-other-week Us magazine into Us Weekly for Wenner Media. She then swiftly bailed to take a bigger-bucks job at AMI.

She began as a sportswear editor for WWD, redesigned teen-book YM (more than doubling circulation), then caught the eye of Hearst‘s Cathie Black, who named Fuller founding editor of Marie Claire. That led to the touchy moment when Cathie handpicked Bonnie to take over Cosmopolitan from the legendary-but-aging and fiercely protective Helen Gurley Brown, wife of Jaws producer David Brown. When I told Helen, “You’re rich. You’re happy. Give it up,” she whined, “But no one will ask me to lunch.”

Bonnie gave Cosmo a much needed shot in the arm, then promptly deserted to the enemy, Cosmo‘s Condé Nast rival, Glamour. There were rumors she was using Glamour to get the job at Harper’sBazaar. Instead, she was fired from Condé Nast and went to irascible
Jann
Wenner
Jann Wenner
‘s Us.* So swiftly did she change allegiances, I wrote, “The morning Bonnie starts work at her latest job, she’s sending out résumés for the next.” Wiseass, granted, but you get the point.

We lunched recently at Michael’s, the media hangout. As is typical, she was late, windblown, with her hair astray and clothes pleasantly off the rack. None of which detracts slightly from the fact that she is one hell of an editor, always pushing envelopes and pushing herself.

“Do you ever slow down, ever stop?” I inquired. She claimed she and her husband and the children would be spending a week in January skiing (cell-phoning from the chairlift?).

She was feeling pretty good about her new, glossy Star (it’s now selling 1.5 million copies per week) but wanted to talk about her first-ever book, The Joys of Much Too Much, written with a ghost and to be published by Simon & Schuster in April, when you can expect to see Bonnie on all the talk shows. “Excited about it?” I asked. “Very excited. And I’m nervous.”

As for the expensive Star makeover, whose idea was that? “Pecker wanted to go glossy with TheStar, and I’d also been thinking about it. So there was a meeting of the minds. We talk often, meet one-on-one at least once a week. We are absolutely on the same page on this.”

Bonnie’s Star lives on rumors and thrives on gossip. Tom & Katie, Brad & Jen, Paris & Paris, Britney & you name it. But it’s savvy Bonnie who inspires the industry buzz, and without ever dancing on tables or wearing Prada. Media people talk endlessly about her workaholic ways and rapid staff turnover, the last-minute story kills and cover line revisions. And of course, the money she makes. So where will the unsinkable Bonnie land next?

Aside to Pecker: Her AMI contract expires in June.

*A previous version of this story incorrectly said Bonnie Fuller “snubbed” Condé Nast to go to Us Weekly.